Halifax paving the way for unhappy Cow Bay residents

Wayne Bell stands on the unpaved road of his neighbourhood in Cow Bay on Friday. (ADRIEN VECZAN / Staff)

Halifax Regional Municipality is forging ahead with plans to pave gravel roads in Cow Bay despite property owners speaking out against the initiative.

Wayne Bell said most residents in the rural area near Cole Harbour don’t want the roads paved, but the municipality has ignored them.

Bell said he’ll have to come up with $6,000 to cover his portion of the paving costs.

“Some of the residents feel we’ve been harassed by HRM because we keep saying we don’t want it, and that’s not the answer they want to hear,” he said in an interview from his Flandrum Hill Road home Friday.

A municipal staff report noted that each street has been surveyed for paving “a number of times” from 2003 to 2013. In the most recent survey, property owners on three of the five Cow Bay roads voted against paving.

Rather than each property owner’s vote carrying equal weight, the survey is based on “recoverable frontage.” The more land a resident has along the road, the more weight their vote will carry and, ultimately, the more they would have to pay to pave the road.

The survey found that property owners with 52 per cent of land along Flandrum Hill Road were not in favour of paving, while property owners with half the land along Flandrum Court were in favour.

On Braeside Avenue, property owners with 79 per cent of the land were not in favour of paving, while 76 per cent were in favour on Belvedere Avenue. Finally, 79 per cent on Patterson Road were not in favour of paving.

However, municipal staff must take more into consideration than just the votes of property owners.

A gravel road will deteriorate faster with more vehicles using it and cost more for the municipality to maintain. Staff therefore also take into account a traffic survey with an average daily vehicle count.

It is recommended gravel be upgraded to pavement once 200 vehicles travel on a road each day.

Four of the five roads don’t meet that threshold.

“If there were more cars using these roads or there were plans to build a new subdivision in the area, I could understand wanting to pave,” Bell said.

“But that’s not the case, and the residents don’t want it. The municipality seems to be forcing this down our throats.”

Although the municipality could have gone ahead with only paving the two roads where residents wanted the work done, staff recommended paving all five at once. Regional council voted in favour of the recommendation.

Bill Karsten, councillor for Dartmouth South-Eastern Passage, could not be reached Friday.

The paving project, which includes Flandrum Hill Road, Flandrum Court, Braeside Avenue, Belvedere Avenue and Patterson Road, is slated to start Wednesday and run until July 9.

Cow Bay residents can expect to receive a bill for the paving next spring. The municipality will pay 50 per cent of the cost, with the remainder to be recovered from property owners abutting the streets. A 10-year payment plan, plus interest, is available.